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Enlarge ImageRequest to buy this photoTom Dodge | DispatchEric Thomas, 14, left, and Davonte Johnson, 13, are to serve at least three years in a juvenile facility for their role in a murder.

Davonte Johnson and Eric Thomas were risking no more than a truancy charge when they decided to
skip school on April 26 and roam the streets of the Near East Side.

But a chance meeting with an older teenage acquaintance — who carried a handgun — led to plans
for a robbery.

Those plans turned deadly when they targeted a 43-year-old man sitting on a park bench, who
resisted and was shot.

Johnson, 13, and Thomas, 14, could be locked up until age 21 after they admitted their
involvement in the killing yesterday.

Each was convicted of a delinquency charge of murder with a gun in a plea agreement with
prosecutors. The deal requires that they testify against the accused shooter, 16-year-old Steven
Lee, if his case goes to trial.

Lee’s case was transferred to adult court in July. A trial date has not been set.

The three were charged with killing Celestin Ganga when he refused to hand over the marijuana he
was using to roll a joint on a bench in Sawyer Park at about 11 a.m.

“Somebody is dead over marijuana, and you had a role in it,” Franklin County Juvenile Court
Judge Kim A. Browne told the teens. “You’ll have to deal with that.”

Under the agreement accepted by the judge, Johnson and Thomas can apply for early release after
serving three years with the Ohio Department of Youth Services, minus the four months they have
served since their arrests.

Assistant Prosecutor Dan Lenert said the robbery plan was hatched after Lee, of E. Starr Avenue,
showed the gun to Johnson and Thomas. The three decided to rob Ganga after spotting him in the park
near Skyview Towers, the former Sawyer Towers housing project.

Thomas, of E. 3rd Avenue, told the judge during the July hearing that Johnson took the gun and
approached the man, who refused to give up the marijuana. He said Lee then grabbed the gun and
said, “Give me the (expletive) weed. I’m not playing.”

When Ganga yelled for help and began to run, Lee shot him once, Thomas said.

No family or friends of the victim attended the hearing.

The short, thin defendants said little other than to answer questions from Browne about whether
they understood their rights and the agreement they had reached with prosecutors.

Thomas seemed confused when the judge asked if he wanted her to accept the agreement.

“What does that mean?” he asked.

Browne called the crime deplorable and told the teens to think about “how fortunate you are not
to be spending time in an adult facility.”

Because Johnson, of Reynolds Avenue, was younger than 14 at the time of the crime, he was not
eligible to be tried as an adult. As part of the plea deal, prosecutors withdrew a request to try
Thomas as an adult.